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Using The 'Smart+' Shield Props In Poser
1) Within the scene select the figure you want to hold the shield (select any body part).
2) Double-click the Poser version of the Smart+ Shield Prop. A dialogue box will appear.
3) Click through the sequence of dialogue boxes that appear, checking that the options are what you want.
4) The shield should now be held firmly in the selected figure's hand.

Using The 'Smart+' Shield Props In DAZ Studio
1) Within the scene select the figure you want to hold the shield (you must select the root node of the figure, and no other nodes must be selected).
2) Double-click the DAZ Studio version of the Smart+ Shield Prop. The shield prop will appear face down at the origin and a dialogue box will appear.
3) Check that the options in the dialogue box are what you want and then click 'Accept'.
4) The shield should now be held firmly in the selected figure's hand.

By the way, the textures at present are basic diffuse and specular only. I'm still working on a DAZ Studio 'Simple Dual Material Shader' specifically for this shield, and I'll be releasing it soon, along with a Poser equivalent - fingers crossed!

I'm also working on several additional designs for the faces of the shields, all based on historical examples - I'll be releasing them soon as well

New Poser/DAZ Studio shaders (very basic versions to start with, allowing you to easily change the paint colour and overlay design) going well, along with one additional design for each shield. Upload before the weekend if all goes well. More info plus larger versions of the attached images via the 'Art' and 'Blog' links in my signature.

One new design for each shield (both 'new' and 'worn' versions, with Poser and DAZ Studio materials), plus a simple shader (Poser and DAZ Studio versions) that lets you easily change the colours,design, and wear pattern.

One new design for each shield (both 'new' and 'worn' versions, with Poser and DAZ Studio materials), plus a simple shader (Poser and DAZ Studio versions) that lets you easily change the colours,design, and wear pattern.

Thanks Pen - by the way, one of the main goals of that Shader Mixer stuff you helped me get started on was to do a shader for these shields. The shader I've released so far is a very simple version, but I should have a far more flexible one ready for release in the not-too-distant future.

There are two new designs for each of the three shields, and there's a 'new' and 'worn' version of each as usual. They're the same gold-on-black-on-wood as all the previous designs. But with the 'ShieldTMS(Basic)' shader (DAZ Studio and Poser versions) it's easy to adjust the colours of the three layers (or to use texture images). It's also really easy to use your own design for the shield pattern.

Thanks Pen - by the way, one of the main goals of that Shader Mixer stuff you helped me get started on was to do a shader for these shields. The shader I've released so far is a very simple version, but I should have a far more flexible one ready for release in the not-too-distant future.

I should probably include an example of what you can do with the simple shader I've included, so say hello to "Five Guys Called James"...

Each shield in this image is the same model with different overlay masks (i.e. shield designs), different diffuse/specular colours for all three layers, and the same wear pattern mask.

I'm quite pleased with how this is going - once I get the reflection and bump added to the shaders I think I'll have reached my goal for this little project.

(I've already released a prototype of the DAZ Studio version of the full shader as the 'SDMS Shader (beta)' freebie, and I've got a more-or-less working Poser version too - some question threads about this will be appearing soon)

Final batch of textures for these shields available at ShareCG and Renderosity Freestuff - one more texture for each of the three shields ('new' and 'worn' versions as usual, plus the usual masks for use with the shield shader).

The majority of my source photos have been used now. I've got a few more photos, mainly of round shields, but they're mostly very small images (as mentioned at the bottom of this blog post) so that's it for now on S.E. Asian shield patterns.

I've got the final version of my Poser shield shader more-or-less ready, so that should be released soon-ish. The DAZ Studio version should follow that.

You'll probably need to play around on the Advanced tab of the material room to get things looking how you want. The shader network should be pretty intuitive, but there's some hints in the readme. I can add more info on this thread if anybody wants?

N.B. These shaders are for POSER ONLY!
Tested in Poser 6, 8, and 9 on a Windows 7 PC.

(DAZ Studio version will follow, not sure how soon...)

P.S. The reflection map image in this package is from www.horo.ch, used with permission. Thanks Horo!

...and finally, got the DAZ Studio version of the shader completed (sort of) and uploaded. It's not quite how I wanted it, but it's good enough for the time being. No real known issues - just didn't get some of the nice features I wanted into it.

(Darn it! just compared the image below with the one above from the Poser shader above, and I seem to have lost the reflections!? No time to sort that now, but I'll get back to it and see what's going on...)

P.S. The reflection map image in this package is from www.horo.ch, used with permission. Thanks Horo!

...and finally, got the DAZ Studio version of the shader completed (sort of) and uploaded. It's not quite how I wanted it, but it's good enough for the time being. No real known issues - just didn't get some of the nice features I wanted into it.

Available as a freebie at ShareCG and soon on Renderosity Freestuff with luck.

Tested on a Windows 7 PC in both DAZ Studio 3 and DAZ Studio 4.5

(Darn it! just compared the image below with the one above from the Poser shader above, and I seem to have lost the reflections!? No time to sort that now, but I'll get back to it and see what's going on...)

Yes, but the bump/displacement/normalmap (or whatever) seems to provide a 'cleaner' or 'crisper' mesh deformation...looks more like it's actually part of the mesh and not something 'painted' on.

I'll give it a spin and see if I can see what happened to the reflections.

Well, the reflection is working correctly - it just doesn't show up very well with the default settings. (btw - it's the black part of the shield that should have reflections)

The attached image shows renders after a series of cumulative changes on the surfaces tab:

1. Loaded the rectangular shield prop into DS4.5, X-rotated it 180° so it's face-up, selected top view and zoomed a bit. No lights in the scene, so DS default lighting. Applied the ShieldTMS(Full).duf. Rendered it. No sign of reflection.
2. Set 'Wear Mask' to 'None'on the surfaces tab (SEAShieldRectangular > Shield > Masks) and re-rendered. You can just make out the reflection if you look very carefully.
3. Set specular strength to 0% (was 50% by default) and reflection strength to 100% (was 50% by default) for the Mid Texture (SEAShieldRectangular > Shield > Mid Texture > Specular/Reflection) and re-rendered. The reflections a little bit easier to spot.
4. Set the diffuse color to mid-grey, 128,128,128, (was 32,32,32 by default) for the Mid Texture (SEAShieldRectangular > Shield > Mid Texture > Diffuse) and re-rendered. The reflection is very clearly there now

Yes, but the bump/displacement/normalmap (or whatever) seems to provide a 'cleaner' or 'crisper' mesh deformation...looks more like it's actually part of the mesh and not something 'painted' on.

I'll give it a spin and see if I can see what happened to the reflections.

Thanks, it's just bump. No normals in this shader (still haven't got the maths sorted!). Per-layer displacement is in the shader, but default settings are zero. It's only per-layer bump that's non-zero for the render (negative for the base (wood) layer, positive for the upper (gold design) layer.

Worked out why the reflection isn't showing, but don't really understand the deeper why behind it? Reflections worked fine with a dark mid (paint) layer in the Poser shader, so maybe I'm missing an important difference between DAZ Studio and Poser?

(Edit (two years later- I'm not a quick thinker! ) : Surely the diffuse colour should be completely irrelevant for a 100% reflective surface ? So 3 and 4 in the post above should look identical? Edit: I have a vague recollection that Rob (rbtwhiz) mentioned something about reflections not working correctly, but that was way, way back. I probably need to recheck in DS4.6...)

Quick recheck in DS4.6 (4.6.1.17 Pro 64bit) - I'm beginning to remember some of the ins and outs of DS reflections...

First lets forget the ShaderMixer shader and just use the basic reflection parameters on the normal DS UI Surfacess tab.

First image (Raytraced reflections):
two plane primitives, three cylinder primitives. Raytraced reflections and 100% reflection strength on both planes, one plane has diffuse color set to white, the other to black. All other surface parameters on the planes are the same.

The reflections of the cylinders in both planes look correct. But the colour of the rest of each plane is it's diffuse colour, which intuitively seems wrong for a 100% reflective surface? DS doesn't seem to have any concept here of a 'general background reflection color'. But isn't that what 'Reflection Color' is supposed to do? No it isn't, next test...

Second image (Raytraced reflections with reflection color set):
I tried setting the 'Reflection Color' of both planes to magenta (255,0,255). The red and blue rod reflections are still there, but the green reflection's gone.

Conclusion
The 'Reflection Color' parameter is NOT an overall background colour that's reflected when the raytracing doen't hit anything. It's more like the colour of a filter applied to any raytraced reflection.

To get a global background reflection you plug an environment map into the 'Reflection Color' channel. Same setup as previous post - I used a test grid (and set Reflection Color' back to white) for both planes.

You still see a hint of the diffuse color (left plane is still black, right plane still white), so the 100% reflection strength seems to be almost working as I'd expect. But we've lost the raytraced reflections of the three rods. Iirc the reflection parameters on the basic UI Parameters tab make Ray-traced reflections and Environment mapped reflections mutually exclusive on a single surface.

Ah! Now this next test rings a bell. I think there was a separate problem with reflections in ShaderMixer.

Same setup as above but I've applied the "DMS(Full)" shader to both planes. I removed the masks (so only the top layers have any effect), set 100% reflection strength, raytraced reflections ('Mapped Or Raytraced' sliders to the far right), no reflection map, white reflection color. Once again the diffuse colors were the only difference.

And just to be sure I hadn't got a stray setting in the surface of one of the planes I then changed just the diffuse colours (second image.

So the problem with raytraced reflections disappearing with darker colours was to do with ShaderMixer (just my shader, or ShaderMixer in general I'm not sure. Comment about reflections not working properly now tracked down - link in the next post)

I mentioned in post #7 of that thread that "...they seem to more-or-less work, except for reflections (don’t know why yet).", and Rob responded in post #10 there saying that "There are some ray tracing bugs in DAZ Studio 4.5.0.114 that resulted from updating the 3Delight renderer..."

I'd guess that those bugs would've been ironed out by 4.6. So I really need to check again.

Suffice to say there's something not quite right with the reflections in the ShaderMixer shader.